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A review by charlottereadsthings
Call Me By Your Name - Screenplay by James Ivory, André Aciman
2.0
I went into this book knowing nothing about it except that it's a gay teen romance and was recently made into a film.
I found Elio an interesting but also worrying character as he explains the feelings he had one summer for a boy called Oliver. They are intense and his narrative certainly shows that, stepping over the threshold into a more violent expression: at one point he says that he wishes he could break Oliver's legs so that he could be in a wheelchair and therefore never be able to leave.
The romance felt very one sided while Elio was willing to give everything to Oliver (while not entirely understand exactly what that 'everything' was) whereas Oliver was sleeping with half the Island and had Elio on a rubber band. So I found it difficult to be fully invested in their relationship and really "root" for them at all.
There were some passages I noted down that I loved but I found the writing a bit dense and often had to reread passages to try to understand exactly what was happening.
However, I love how everything was told through "moments" rather than a consistent stream. I feel it reflected how we often look back on our lives: we don't remember everything, just the important moments.
I found Elio an interesting but also worrying character as he explains the feelings he had one summer for a boy called Oliver. They are intense and his narrative certainly shows that, stepping over the threshold into a more violent expression: at one point he says that he wishes he could break Oliver's legs so that he could be in a wheelchair and therefore never be able to leave.
The romance felt very one sided while Elio was willing to give everything to Oliver (while not entirely understand exactly what that 'everything' was) whereas Oliver was sleeping with half the Island and had Elio on a rubber band. So I found it difficult to be fully invested in their relationship and really "root" for them at all.
There were some passages I noted down that I loved but I found the writing a bit dense and often had to reread passages to try to understand exactly what was happening.
However, I love how everything was told through "moments" rather than a consistent stream. I feel it reflected how we often look back on our lives: we don't remember everything, just the important moments.